While every generation claims that the era of music they grew up listening to is the
best, there is an objective argument to be made that certain decades definitely had better
music than others.
While 80's hip-hop was relatively basic and sort of lame, it did end up evolving into
the best era for hip-hop music ever, which occurred in the early-to-mid 90's.
From Dr. Dre to Tupac on the West Coast to The Notorious BIG, Nas and groups like the
Wu-Tang Clan on the East, there are countless classic hip-hop albums from that period.
So, let's take a look at why 90's hip-hop is the best!
It Had a Message
You'd think that with all the activism going on right now such as #Never Again and #Black
Lives Matter, that the top rappers in the game would be focusing a lot more on social
issues instead of releasing songs like "Hotline Bling".
The simple fact is, modern-day rappers are tightly integrated with corporations and because
of that they really don't want to rub anyone the wrong way and interrupt the flow of money
they receive from merchandizing, sponsorships and concert promoters.
The music industry isn't what it was even in the 90's and so it is understandable that
musicians can't rely on the sale of their albums the way that rappers did in the 90's,
a lot of which was driven by controversy that helped their albums seem cool to kids in the
suburbs (not to mention the people that were buying them just to burn them in protest).
Regardless, a lot of the top artists in the game in the 90's had a message and considering
all the movements championing social justice, it's pretty amazing and sad that rappers like
Tupac and Ice T were getting admonished in the 90's for things that are only now being
openly discussed in white society.
Because of the lack of support, it really made it even more impressive that rappers
were willing to talk about things like that as they not only fell on mostly deaf ears,
but they also created a backlash that was unprecedented at the time as we will see in
the next entry.
There are and have been rappers that focused on social issues since, and there aren’t
really any rappers that are mainstream and popular that are releasing singles like Tupac's
'Brenda's Got a Baby' or 'Keep Your Head Up' (or his first posthumous single, 'Changes').
The main thing wasn't just that 90's rappers released those songs as singles, but that
they made classic songs that were actually really great to listen to as well.
It took a certain balance that seems to be off these days.
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It Had Real Consequences
Most rappers were anti-establishment back in the 90's as opposed to being fully integrated
into the few corporations left that produce and release music these days.
While there are a few rappers that have forged their own path, such as Chance the Rapper
or the Rhymesayers guys up in Minneapolis, the truth is that rappers are a lot more mainstream
than they were back in the day (case in point, Snoop Dogg hosting a game show and Ice T playing
a cop on television).
That rebellion in the 90's took guts as there were real consequences behind the actions
those rappers took as both politicians on either side of the political spectrum were
targeting rap as an, especially dangerous cancer for the youth.
Between Republican Dan Quayle and people on the left like Al Gore's ex-wife Tipper, Hillary
Clinton and Al Gore's Vice Presidential nominee in Joe Lieberman, rap was basically public
enemy number one in the 90's.
That lead to consequences like the FBI following rappers like Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG,
to the point that they were trailing both when they were murdered (yet somehow didn't
intervene or provide any useful information to the police that were investigating those
deaths).
Shakur's FBI file is available online and is really, really long, especially for a musician
(to be fair, most famous people have an FBI file, mostly because of the death threats
they receive).
Because of that, again, it took real guts to release music that continued to focus on
the topics that people were up in arms about and it actually gave some rappers topics to
discuss on their albums (Tupac's 'Wonder Why They Call You B****' is a great example),
especially considering rappers like Shakur were sued when people did things while "under
the influence of" his music (in case you didn’t know, he was sued after someone who had his
tape in the tape deck of their car killed a police officer).
Those consequences made their music feel even more relevant and genuine and that's something
that just doesn't exist anymore.
The Albums were ... Albums
Some of the greatest rock albums of all-time feel like one long adventure, as the songs,
seem to blend together even if you're not on LSD.
The Dark Side of the Moon, for example, never really has any downtime between songs, which
is why it syncs up so well with The Wizard of Oz so well.
The reason for that is because really after The Beatles transitioned from a pop group
to a rock group and started actually focusing on albums as a whole as opposed to albums
as a way to sell singles (with filler in between), musicians started focusing on albums that
way as well.
The same thing goes for hip hop albums, as they started out just doing the same thing,
pushing singles and having no overall concept for their albums.
That changed in the 90's, though, or at least it reached it's peak in the 90's, with hip-hop
albums not only having a lot less filler (or at least, intentional filler) but also having
concepts.
Wu-Tang's 36 Chambers is a great example of this, as is Notorious BIG's Ready to Die and
Tupac/Makaveli's Don Killuminati: The Seven Day Theory.
The latter of which, The Seven Day Theory, is a lot like The Dark Side of the Moon in
that if you listen from beginning to end there's really no gap between songs (and there are
things you'll miss if you skip ahead).
To be fair, though, the realities of the music business are completely different than they
were back during the mid-90's, as artists have to focus on the amount of streams their
songs can generate and because of that albums as a whole aren't as important as they used
to be as people no longer have to buy entire albums to access songs they like, so you have
to take that into account.
They Told Stories
While the heyday of story-telling rap was really the 80's, with most early raps being
stories or hype songs, like most things hip-hop of the 90's not only improved on storytelling
but also perfected it.
It may be blasphemy to not give Slick Rick credit for being the best storyteller in the
game, especially considering that his classic album The Art of Story Telling was released
in the 90's, one of the main differences between what 80's and 90's rappers were doing in terms
of storytelling is/was the content of those stories.
While it did become a cop out for a lot of rappers to talk about whatever they wanted
while saying "I'm just talking about what I see!", the truth is that a lot of the GOAT
rappers were in fact, discussing the bleak realities of living in the inner-city in the
era of crack cocaine.
Just look at Notorious BIG's first album, Ready to Die, that really shows not only what
his life was like as a crack dealer but also the pressure he felt as a young father whose
mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Tupac Shakur, who was known as a walking contradiction because of the difference between his story
telling songs and his party songs (the former of which was really pro-woman with songs like
Keep Your Head Up or Brenda's Got a Baby, the latter of which talked about sleeping
around with women, like I Get Around, for example), also did a great job of projecting
the mindset of a young black man whose mother was addicted to crack and who had multiple
negative run ins with objectively bad police (as an example, he sued the Oakland Police
Department for brutality and won).
The Competition was REAL
Today's hip-hop as compared to 90's hip-hop can best be compared to NBA today versus the
NBA of the 90's (otherwise known as Michael Jordan's NBA).
Outside of people like 50 Cent, who uses beef to stay as close to relevant as he can, most
rappers today aren't really competing with one another as much as they're copying and/or
collaborating with one another.
Like the theory of capitalism, competition is actually a good thing because it breeds
innovation and change.
So, while there are obvious downsides to that competition as well (I’m thinking of East
Coast/West Coast “War" here), when you had people like Tupac and Biggie competing against
not only one another but other rappers like Nas, you'll see just how helpful competition
can be when it comes to the rap game.
That extends to the production side, as well, as producers in the 90's never rested on their
laurels but rather kept improving their output as not to become stale or fall behind what
was a fast-changing game.
After both Tupac and Biggie died people no longer had the two best emcees of all-time
to compare themselves to and because of that some rappers fell off, with Nas, unfortunately,
being the best example.
When he suddenly had to compete against someone again he came back with such a vengeance that
he created a new verb (getting "Ethered").
Hip-hop needs more of that, but it's understandable why people moved away from it as both Tupac
and Biggie died because of their intense competition and people like 50 Cent really just made "beef"
in a cheap way to get attention before an album was ready to drop.
It was Innovative
Hip-hop, more than any other form of music is a consistently
changing art form.
The type and sound of what's popular, even now, changes from year to year and because
of that rappers have the same job security of anyone working in Trump’s White House
- Yikes.
The difference between hip-hop today and hip hop from the 90's is that today's hip-hop
really just jumps from trend to trend, from krunk to sing-songy rap (think Ja Rule, and
then try not to shudder), to the high pitched chorus' of Kanye West's beats, whereas 90's
rap seemed to change based on a natural evolution that comes from competition and creativity.
Compare Dr. Dre's production on NWA's first album to what he did with Death Row and you'll
see a natural evolution that is a lot like what the Beatles were doing in the late 60's.
Today's hip-hop seems to jump really from city to city thanks to the advent of the internet
and how easy it is for anyone to create and disseminate their music and because of that
rappers and producers tend to copy whatever type of sound is popular that month.
There are obvious exceptions to that, like Kendrick Lamar, but you only have to look
at his mentor to see why he's able to really ignore the flavor of the month and focus on
his craft.
Hint, it’s Dr. Dre.
A perfect example of this is looking at how every rapper sounded after both Drake and
Future appeared on the scene and then compare that to the 90's, where every rapper had their
own distinctive sound that didn't sound like anyone else.
There Were Groups
During the late 90's and early aughts, the typical evolution of a rapper's career was
to drop a debut album, wait for that to blow up, start one's own record label and then
release an album with whatever group they put together with friends from their childhood.
Examples of that are nearly endless, with Nelly and the St. Lunatics, 50 Cent and G-Unit,
Eminem and D-12 being prime examples of that.
Before that, though, there were actual groups that started out as groups and then, depending
on the success of their album(s), they might have a solo album every couple of years (while
they were still part of the original group).
The best example of that is The Wu-Tang Clan, which debuted with one of the best albums
of all-time with 36 Chambers.
After that album blew up there were and still are albums from group members like Method
Man, RZA, Ghostface Killa, Old Dirty Bastard, and GZA.
There was NWA (which technically was formed/in it's prime in the late 80's), Mobb Deep, Thug
Life, Junior Mafia, Live Squad, The Outlawz, Cyprus Hill, De La Soul, A Tribe Called Quest
and many more.
Another difference besides how these groups were formed as compared to the groups from
the 2000's is the fact that these groups actually produced amazing albums.
Most of the more modern group's albums had a lot of filler, with songs that you really
only listened to in order to hear the star of the group like Eminem or Nelly (to a much
lesser extent), whereas groups like Wu-Tang really had no weak members and no filler songs.
If you don't believe me, compare Mobb Deep's The Infamous or Hell on Earth to the St. Lunatics'
album(s).
Rebellion vs. The Institution
Today's hip-hop has been described as corporate hip-hop, because most of the biggest rappers
are really all about making money and while they may rap about things like drugs and women,
often in a profane way, they're really not focusing on things like social issues or taking
on the establishment as they've basically become the establishment.
The best example of this is the fact that former President Barack Obama had Jay-Z at
the White House on numerous occasions and while Eazy E did visit the White House as
well, it wasn't done as a casual invite but rather as a way to discuss the effects of
"Gangster Rap" on the youth.
That's because the first Bush White House had made an issue out of rap music, namely
rap music that targeted police.
Rappers like Ice-T, whose song "Cop Killer" (which was, to be fair, actually a rock song
with his band Body Count) started a national debate about free speech as it applied to
music.
Bush's Vice President was Dan Quayle, who discussed Tupac Shakur on national television,
which may or may not have been the reason that the FBI was actually investigating Tupac
and other rappers like the Notorious BIG.
Beyond that, there were actual "Hip Hop Cops" in cities like New York, who’s only job
was to investigate the rappers connection to the guns and drug trade as well as their
connection to organized crime.
You had groups like NWA and especially Public Enemy, that rapped about real issues.
Tupac Shakur, for example, had multiple songs removed from his earlier albums (namely Thug
Life: Volume 1) because of the fervor over his music, all that lead to Warner Brothers
dropping Interscope Records after people protested outside of their headquarters.
Considering how profitable Interscope became, I'm sure they regret that decision now.
Producers/Beats
One of the main differences between 90's hip-hop and today's rap is the fact that a lot of
the producers back then were as famous as the emcees they were working with.
While that did extend into the early 2000's with people like Scott Storch, there aren't
really a ton of producers out there today that were on that level.
People like Dr. Dre, DJ Premier, Daz Dillinger, DJ Quik, DJ Muggs, Johnny J, Timbaland, Q-Tip,
RZA, Pete Rock and J Dilla produced some of the best music ever.
That's because they took immense risks and were really experimenting with music in ways
that producers these days simply don't, they were at the point in the evolution of the
genre where they were being rewarded for experimentation because they cared more about the craft than
they did how well a certain song performed on the charts or the radio.
They pushed one another to try new things and create new things that people never heard
before.
Because of that 90's hip-hop still sounds amazing!
It had the GOATs
The main reason that 90's hip-hop is the best really boils down to the fact that the emcees
that were around back then were just straight up amazing.
If you go to any rap video on YouTube and check the comments you'll eventually run into
a comment (or 500) that state that whichever rapper whose video you're watching "wouldn't
exist if Tupac or Biggie was still alive" and while that's probably a mix between hyperbole
and wishful thinking, those people have a point.
The death of both Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls left a void in the rap game that was
filled by rappers like Jay-Z and DMX and that changed the trajectory of the entire genre.
Imagine the Beatles dying in a plane crash in 1964, before they'd reached their prime
in their late 20's.
That's what happened with Shakur and Smalls, who were 25 and 24 respectively when they
were gunned down.
Despite their young age, the two produced what is considered the best hip-hop music
that the world has ever seen!
Their music was so good that they were considered leaps and bounds ahead of people like Nas,
whose Illmatic album is one most every Top 10 hip-hop albums list.
Then you have Snoop Dogg(y Dogg) in his prime, Dr. Dre's The Chronic and G-Funk style and
amazing groups The Wu-Tang Clan's 36 Chambers and Mobb Deep.
The talent was so amazing and the classics were being released month after month, that's
something that'll never happen again and that's really the reason why 90's hip-hop is the
best.
You got to be feeling fly after that.
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